Even after they’ve gone to you for treatment, I felt like saying. But didn’t.
“Doing anything for the holidays?” Joe asked me. We were stopped at a traffic light that was generally acknowledged to be the slowest traffic light in Merrick. Whole days would pass and this traffic light would stay red. Kingdoms rose and fell, presidential administrations came and went, and the light obstinately refused to change.
“No. Going over to Deanna’s mom like we do every year.”
“Uh-huh.”
Then after I asked Joe the same thing, and Joe told me he was going down to Florida for a few days, the car went quiet as we both realized that was pretty much it — we’d run out of small talk.
“Boy, it’s cold,” Joe finally said, repeating his comment from earlier in the ride.
“Go through the light, Joe,” I said.
“What?”
“Go through the light." Something had just come to me.
“Why should I — ”
Deanna had asked me to wait at the station. Because the chimney cleaner I’d hired was there and she didn’t want to leave him alone in the house.
“Go through the fucking light. ”
I hadn’t hired a chimney cleaner.
“Look, Charles, I don’t want to get a ticket and I don’t see what the big rush is — ”
“Go!”
So Joe did. The evident panic in my voice finally spurred Joe into action; he gunned the engine and went right through the traffic light, swinging into Kirkwood Road just two blocks from our homes.
“If I got a ticket, you’d pay it,” Joe said, trying to regain a little of his dignity now that he’d blindly obeyed his neighbor for no good reason. What did I mean, coming off like that, ordering him around?
“Stop here,” I said.
Joe had obviously intended to steer the car into his own driveway and let me walk next door. But I couldn’t wait. For the second time in two minutes, Joe did as he was told. He stopped the car in front of 1823 Yale and I jumped out.
When I flung open my front door, I saw Deanna leaning against the banister, in the middle of telling someone that Curry didn’t like everyone this way, that he was selective with his affections.
And then the person she was telling this to.
“Mr. Ramirez said he’s giving us a special price,” Deanna was saying.
We were sitting in the living room, the three of us.
“But only because he likes Curry and vice versa,” Deanna continued. She was talking about the price of cleaning the chimney. Deanna always managed to settle into an easy rapport with handymen of one kind of another, befriending them, regaling me later with stories about their wives and children.
“Yeah,” Vasquez said. “I’m just a dog lover.” He was smiling, the same smile he’d had when he was propping Lucinda up against the bed to rape her for the last time.
“Mr. Ramirez — ” Deanna said, but she was interrupted.
“Raul,” Vasquez said.
“Raul said our chimney has a broken. . . what was that again?”
“Flue.”
“Yes, we have a broken flue.”
“Yeah. It’s an old chimney,” Vasquez said. “When was this house built?”
“Nineteen twelve,” Deanna said. “I think.”
“Yeah. It’s probably never been touched.”
“Then I guess it’s about time,” Deanna said.
“That’s right. Sure.”
I hadn’t said anything yet. But now they were waiting for me to say something, some acknowledgment of the problem at hand and what I was going to do about it. I hadn’t said anything yet because I couldn’t imagine what to say.
“So,” Deanna continued, “Raul is prepared to fix it and clean the chimney. But it’s up to you.”
“You don’t want to live with a broken flue,” Vasquez said. “The thing could be dangerous. All that carbon dioxide can back up, man—it'll kill you while you’re sleeping, understand?”
Yes, I understood all right.
“There was this family I knew that didn’t fix their flue,” Vasquez said. “One night they went to sleep, and in the morning they didn’t wake up. All of them, dead. A whole family.”
“So, what do you say?” Deanna asked me, looking alarmed now. “What do you want to do?”
Anna wandered into the living room, dressed in pajamas.
“What’s the capital of North Dakota?” she asked me.
Two questions before me now, but I only felt like answering one.
I’ll take state capitals for one hundred, Alex.
“Bismarck,” I said.
“Anna, this is Raul,” Deanna said, always the hostess.
“Hi,” Anna said, flashing him her most polite smile, the one she trotted out for distant relatives, old friends of her parents, and, apparently, handymen.
“Hello,” Vasquez said, and reached out and tousled her hair. That hand on my child’s head.
“How old are you?” Vasquez asked her.
“Thirteen,” Anna said.
“That right?”
He hadn’t taken his hand off her head. Instead of coming off the way it was supposed to, it was lingering there uncomfortably, five, then ten, then fifteen seconds; Anna was starting to squirm.
“Look just like your mom,” Vasquez said to her.
“Thanks.”
“You like school?”
Anna nodded. My daughter, who generally tried to refrain from offending anyone, obviously wanting that hand off her head now, but evidently unsure just how to accomplish that. She looked at me for help.
“Look . . . ,” I said.
“Yeah?” Vasquez stared right back at me. “You say something?”
I said: “Why don’t you run upstairs and finish your homework, Anna.”
“Okay.” She wanted to do that, yes, but the problem was that Vasquez hadn’t taken his hand off her head yet. So she stood there, her eyes still beseeching me for assistance.
“Goon, honey.”
“Okay.”
But Vasquez was still not removing his hand, still standing there and smiling at me as the room finally went quiet. One of those awkward moments — like watching a friend of the family kiss your wife just a little too intimately at a drunken party and not knowing whether to stand by and watch or challenge him to a fistfight.
“I have to do my homework,” Anna said.
“Homework? Aww . . . pretty girls like you don’t have to do homework. You gotta get the boys to do it for you.”
This was where I was supposed to act. Where I was supposed to say please get your fucking hand off my daughter’s head because it’s fucking making her uncomfortable and she wants to go upstairs, understand fucking English?
The silence was loud enough to split eardrums.
Then: “She likes to do her homework herself,” Deanna said. Ending it. And finally, mercifully, insinuating herself between Vasquez’s arm and Anna’s head, physically and decisively ushering our daughter out of harm’s way.
When Anna padded out of the living room, she glanced back at me with an expression that seemed to admonish me. Apparently, her face said, she’d been looking to the wrong parent for help.
I heard her footsteps going up the stairs at double speed.
Quiet again. Then:
“So . . . ?” Deanna said, clearing her throat. “Maybe you want to think about this, honey?” Apparently this was one hired help she wasn’t going to befriend after all.
“I wouldn’t take too long,” Vasquez said, still smiling. “You don’t want to take chances with your family’s safety, right?”
I felt something acidic deep in my guts, something ice cold and broiling hot at the same time. I thought I might need to throw up.
“No,” I said. “I’ll get back to you soon.”
“Okay, you get back to me, then.”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you see Raul out,” Deanna said, evidently eager to get him out of the
house.
So I walked him to the front door, where Vasquez turned and put his hand out, just as you’d expect from your friendly neighborhood chimney cleaner.
“Know what they taught us in the army, Charles?” he whispered. “Before I got kicked out?”
“What?”
Vasquez showed me.
Leaving one hand exactly where it was, proffered in friendship, but using the other one to grasp my testicles. Crushing them in his fingers.
My knees buckled.
“Grab ’em by the balls. Their hearts and minds will follow.”
I tried to say something but couldn’t. I wanted to cry out but couldn’t. Deanna was not twenty feet behind me and completely oblivious to the excruciating pain radiating down my legs and threatening to make me scream.
“I want the money, Charles.”
I felt my eyes begin to water. “I’ll . . .”
“What?Can’t hear you. . . .”
“I’ll . . .”
“I’ll never hang up on you again? That's cool, apology accepted. I want the fucking money.”
“I can’t breathe. . . .”
“A hundred thousand dollars, okay?”
“I. . .”
“What?”
“Plea . . .”
“A hundred thousand and I give you your balls back.”
“I. . .pl. . .”
And then he did.
He did give them back. At least temporarily. He opened his fingers, and I slumped against the doorjamb.
“Honey,” Deanna said, “can you bring the recycling bin out to the curb?”
TWENTY
I was looking over the bid for the aspirin job.
Think of this as a kind of avoidance therapy. If I was looking over the bid for the aspirin job, I couldn’t be asking myself
What was I going to do? How was I going to survive this?
So that’s what I was doing.
Meticulously going over that aspirin bid; something was wrong with it, but I didn’t know what. What was wrong with it?
This avoidance strategy was only partially successful.
In the middle of scanning down a line of neatly typed-in figures, I saw Vasquez with his hand on my daughter’s head.
If he didn’t get one hundred thousand dollars, he would be coming back.
I thought about telling Deanna.
But as much as I tried to say, She will forgive me, she will. As much as I told myself that Deanna loved me, and wouldn’t that love survive an indiscretion? As many times as I postulated the theory that every marriage has its ups and downs and that okay, this down might be subterranean, but wouldn’t it naturally be followed, after much anguish and restitution, by another upswing? As much as I rationalized, ruminated, debated, and what have you — I couldn’t quite convince myself that I could for one minute withstand that look in Deanna’s eyes. The one that would inexorably come immediately after she found out what I’d been up to.
I’d seen that look before. I’d seen it the morning they’d diagnosed Anna in the emergency room. The look of being utterly and hopelessly betrayed. I’d had to stare it full in the face as the news slowly sank in and she’d fastened on to me like a swimmer being pulled off by an undertow.
I didn’t think I could bear to see it again.
Back to the sheet in front of me. It listed every expense associated with the commercial.
Director’s fee, for instance. Fifteen thousand dollars day rate. Which was about average for a B director, A directors being somewhere up at twenty or twenty-five. Then there was set construction. Forty-five thousand — pretty much the going rate for one suburban kitchen on a New York stage set.
All these thousand dollars reminding me of the thousands I myself didn’t have. Why was I looking at this estimate, anyway? There was something wrong with it. What, exactly? I didn’t know.
There was editing. Film-to-tape transfer. Color correction. Voice-over costs. And there was music. Yes, T&D Music House; that was the name all right. Forty-five thousand dollars. Full orchestra, studio record, mix. Seemed okay.
I called David Frankel.
“Yep,” David answered.
“It’s Charles.”
“I know. It says your extension on my phone.”
“Right. I’ve been trying to call the music house, but I can’t seem to find the number.”
“Whatmusic house?”
“T and D Music.”
“Oh. What are you calling them for?”
“What am I calling them for? I wanted to talk to them about the spot.”
“Why don’t you talk to me about the spot. I’m the producer of the spot.”
“I’ve never heard of T and D Music,” I said.
“You’ve never heard of T and D Music.”
“No.”
“Why are we having this conversation, exactly?” David sighed. “Did you talk to Tom?”
“You mean ever?”
“Look, what do you want the music to be? Just tell me.”
“I’d rather talk to the scorer.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I want to convey my feelings directly.”
“Okay, fine.”
“Okay, fine, what? ”
“Convey your feelings directly. Go ahead.”
“I need their number. ”
Another sigh now, the kind of sigh that said he was dealing with an idiot here, a complete and utter moron.
“I’ll get back to you on that,” David said.
I was going to ask why David needed to get back to me since all I was asking for was a number. I was going to ask him why he was acting as if I were brain-damaged. I was going to remind him that a producer’s job was to produce, and sometimes that meant producing something as simple as a phone number.
But David hung up.
It was only then, as I heard that familiar question whispering in my ear again — What are you going to do, huh, Charles? — that I realized I was a little brain-damaged after all. That I’d been a little slow on the uptake here.
T&D Music House.
Tom and David.
Tom and David Music House. Of course.
I followed Winston for five or six blocks in subzero temperature.
Winston smoked a cigarette. Winston window-shopped — a Giuliani-ized video store — once plastered with triple-X-rated posters promising the raptures of the flesh, now plastered with kung fu posters promising the pulverizing of it. Winston leered at two teenage girls in miniskirts and woolen leggings.
I hadn’t intended to follow Winston. What I’d intended to do was walk right up to him at closing time and ask him if he wanted to have a beer with me. But I’d felt strangely reticent about doing it.
It was one thing to joke around twice a day with a man who delivered your mail, to ask him what left-handed baseball player had the highest batting average in history, to trade wisecracks and earned run averages. It was another thing to go drinking with him. I wasn’t sure Winston would want to go drinking with me.
On the other hand, hadn’t we traded confidences? Or hadn't one of us done that? And now the other ready to do the same? But that brought me to the other reason I hadn’t been able to just walk up to Winston and suggest a drink.
Winston blew on his hands. He waltzed through a traffic light, narrowly avoiding a taxicab seemingly intent on mayhem. Winston stopped at a pretzel man and asked how much.
I was close enough to make out the words. I wished Winston would turn around and acknowledge me. A few more blocks and I was in danger of freezing to death.
Across the street was a Catholic mission with a biblical statement I remembered from Sunday school emblazoned over its door: “Oh Lord, the sea is so large and my boat is so small." True enough, I thought.
When I looked back toward Winston, he wasn’t there. I ran over to the pretzel man and asked him where his last customer had gone to.
“Eh?” the pretzel man said.
“The tall guy you just
sold a pretzel to. Did you see where he went?”
“Eh?”
The man was Lebanese, maybe. Or Iranian. Or Iraqi. Whatever he was, he couldn’t speak English.
“One dolla,” he said.
I said never mind. I walked away and thought: I will talk to Winston tomorrow. Or maybe tomorrow I will change my mind and not talk to him at all.
Someone grabbed me by the arm.
I don’t want a pretzel, I started to say. But it wasn’t the pretzel man.
“Okay, Charles,” Winston said, “why the fuck are you following me?”
TWENTY-ONE
On Christmas Eve I got drunk.
The problem was my mother-in-law’s special eggnog, the special part being that it was two-thirds rum.
“Come to Daddy,” I said to Anna after I’d finished one and a half of them, but she didn’t seem to like that idea.
“You look dopey,” she said to me.
“Are you drunk, Charles?” Deanna asked me.
“Of course not.”
Mrs. Williams had an upright piano that must’ve been seventy years old. Deanna had taken lessons on it until she’d mutinied at ten years old and said enough. No more “Heart and Soul” and “Für Elise.” Mrs. Williams had never quite forgiven her for that; her punishment was having to bang out Christmas songs on the piano we were all forced to sing to. “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” for instance. Neither Deanna nor I was particularly religious, but there are no atheists in foxholes. I belted out, “God and sinners reconcile . . .” as though my life depended on it, my syncopation slightly askew, as I was already into my third eggnog.
“You are drunk, Daddy,” Anna said dourly. She liked singing songs with Grandma about as much as she liked giving herself shots.
“Don’t talk to your father like that,” Deanna said, stopping in midchord. Deanna, my defender and protectress.
“I’m not drunk — both of you,” I said. “Want to see me walk a straight line?”
Apparently not.
Instead Anna snorted and said: “Do we have to sing these stupid songs?”
“. . . . in Bethlehem,” I sang, focusing on the Christmas star on top of the tree. It was faded from years of use, no longer sparkling the way it’d been when Anna needed to be held up in my arms during the Christmas sing-alongs to see it. A tarnished star now; you could see that it wasn’t a star at all — just papier-mâché pockmarked with glue.
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